


There Are No Acceptable Losses

by redfiona



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, Gen, Prompt Fic, Short, ladyfest10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-24
Updated: 2010-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redfiona/pseuds/redfiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'll never come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are No Acceptable Losses

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the start of Season 1.

She'll never come to terms with the idea of acceptable losses. She knows she should, that it's expected of her as commander of the mission, but still. She knows this is what Sumner meant when he objected to having a civilian leader.

She grants him this much, he objected far more to that than to her being a woman.

Sheppard, John, is less easy to deal with, his folder wasn't lying where it said 'doesn't take well to orders,' and yet she knows he doesn't want this command, doesn't want any command, which makes him less troublesome than Sumner.

They, and she'll have to stop seeing of the military parts of her command as 'they' for this to work, they think that her background makes her weak. She must be an ivory tower academic, Georgetown and the UN. They haven't seen the reports she's read, the reports she's had to gather the data for and write, of the evil men do in times of war, declared or undeclared. She speaks five languages and it's never enough, she has to drag interpreters in, which hurts them, and hurts the people telling their stories to them.

She's mopped up the messes of the world, tried to cauterise its wounds with accords and agreements.

There are no acceptable losses, not on their side, and not on their opponents's side, Wraith not included. She doesn't know what to make of the Wraith. She has seen the results of wars where one side are feverish with unstoppable rage, but never with unstoppable hunger. If there is a slippery slope to understanding the idea of acceptable losses, they're probably the start of it.

Stopping the Wraith will cost lives. She thinks that's what the military part of her command doesn't understand. She knows that there will be deaths; she doesn't consider them acceptable.

Every time she sends a team out, and every team is hers, she wants to tell them all to come back safely, and knows she can't, because they won't, because it will make her look weak and she needs to be strong to keep them alive.


End file.
